Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

Wednesday, July 23, 2014

Billboard

While driving through the state of Florida, my wife noticed
an inordinate number of billboards advertising gynecologists. I say inordinate,
because neither of us could ever recall seeing that particular medical
specialty advertised on the Interstate before. When you drive as much as we do,
you become accustomed to seeing restaurants, hotels, tourist attractions, and
even questionable spas that seem a little too eager to highlight the fact that
they service truckers. We never found this unusual since most of those
businesses rely, to some extent, upon the impulsiveness of their audience.
Perhaps you are tired and need a place to crash so you see an ad for a Hampton
Inn and take the exit or you are hungry and decide to take advantage of the
culinary offerings featured on a nearby outdoor sign.

That being said, it is difficult for me to envision someone
glancing out from their car window and thinking, “You know what sounds good? An
invasive medical exam administered by a complete stranger.” Even more
disconcerting was the similarities between the billboards advertising
gynecological exams and the ones promoting real estate agents. Both featured
the same frozen smiles framed by the same focus-group phrases like
“professional” “experienced” and “trustworthy”.

Thankfully, the parallels
eventually ended as only the real-estate agents promised “wider exposure” to
their clients.

I suppose some people find the pictures reassuring, but I
have to wonder how many people actually hinge their medical decisions on the
physical features on the physician. Are there that many people thinking, “I
know they are well-qualified and come highly-recommended, but do I really want
someone with slightly asymmetrical eyebrows involved in my pap smear?”
Conversely, if I was ever window-shopping for a doctor of urology and I saw a
picture of a practitioner with comically-small hands; it could work in their
favor.

Perhaps there is some regulatory parameter in the sunshine
state that lends itself to outdoor advertising for certain medical procedures.
Arkansas has always featured an abundance of billboards touting “vasectomy
reversals” which I have yet to see advertised in other states. Are Arkansas
residents in general statistically more likely to change their mind about
voluntary sterility? Is that stretch of the I-40 corridor early enough into
most family road-trips that dad can be convinced it would be fun to “have
another one”?

Whatever the reason, I think I would want something more
substantial than the presence of an outdoor advertising budget before I would
let someone fiddle with my pipes again. I will say that none of these
billboards featured faces or reassuring keywords. Although more than one of
them prominently displayed the word “affordable”, which is ironic considering the
financial impact of the operation’s intended result.

Again, how many men are driving down the road, see a
billboard, and decide that sitting on a bag of frozen peas for the next three
days would be more fun than whatever activity they had planned? In one instance
the “vasectomy reversal” billboard was in close proximity to a billboard
catering to those facing an “unplanned pregnancy”. It was unclear whether or
not the same service provider had funded both ads, but I suppose it would be
rather novel way to monopolize the reproductive market. The same conglomerate
responsible for making an unplanned pregnancy possible could then be in a
position to swoop in a few months later and attempt to mitigate the
effectiveness of the very procedure they performed on the man responsible for
your current situation.